NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal diverged from the red meat attacks on President Obama that have characterized the Republican Leadership Conference to caution conservative activists that they ought not demonize the president in the fashion some liberals did President Bush.

Jindal recalled what he said were the “shrill, absurd and negative rhetoric” employed by the left during the eight years Bush was in office.

“We must not mimic their shallow approach,” he said to modest applause in a Friday afternoon speech here.

Jindal, who just turned 40, is up for re-election this fall and is widely assumed by the state’s political class to have national ambitions.

So even while tut-tutting the more sharp-edged attacks on Obama, he mixed in reassurance that he wasn’t sympathizing with the president’s policies.

Invoking the debunked notion that president wasn’t born in America, the governor said: “I don’t question where’s he from, I question where President Obama is going.”

He also urged conservatives to channel their disdain for the incumbent.

“Hating President Obama is foolish, but defeating President Obama is absolutely crucial,” said Jindal

And even as he acknowledged that the president is a patriot, the governor criticized Obama’s leadership.

“I’ve got no doubt that President Obama loves this country,” Jindal said, before adding that what the incumbent “thinks is best for this country is in reality a complete disaster.”

(…)

“We as Republicans are Americans first – we have to have respect for the office of the president,” said Jindal. “We need to be serious about this debate, it’s an important debate about the future of our country. We can’t be distracted by ad hominem attacks.”

He added: “I think It’s hypocritical to say, well, it’s not patriotic when they do that to President Bush but it’s ok for our side to it to President Obama.”

Of course, Barack Obama isn’t the first President to have a political opposition that holds irrational beliefs about him. Obama Derangement Syndrome is just the successor to Bush Derangement Syndrome, which was the Democratic response to Clinton Derangement Syndrome. During the Bush 41 and Reagan years, there was that small subset of the left who believed that they had stolen the 1980 election and were involved in drug running. And, of course, you can name numerous Presidents further back in history who had opponents who believed insane things about them. Most of the time, though, that kind of attitude coincided with a time of intense political conflict (i.e. 1800 and Thomas Jefferson, the 1820s and Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln).

It seems different now, though. To a large degree that’s a reflection of our 24/7 news culture, talk radio, and the fact that so much political discussion now takes place in mediums like Twitter where instantaneous responses and outrageous comments are what gets attention. It’s the nature of the beast that the crazies get the most attention, because they’re the ones speaking the loudest. What’s unfortunate is that people start to take what the crazies are saying as truth just because it appears on the internet.

Governor Jindal was right to speak out against the insanity infecting his party. Sadly, though, I don’t think anyone will listen.

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About Doug MataconisDoug holds a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May, 2010 and also writes at Below The Beltway.
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We had posts right here at OTB regarding the “most evil people in history poll” conducted among conservative. Jimmy Carter was #1. Barak Obama was #2.

Notice Ronald Reagan didn’t make the list, despite his tax-raising, government expanding, deficit busting and cutting-and-running.

Those of us who aren’t conservative think the radical right is badly informed, uneducated and a little crazy. The radical right thinks those who aren’t conservative are evil. Hate is the correct word for what the Republican base feels toward the current occupant of the White House, or any other Democrat for that matter.

The “racism/hate” charge is an easy one for the Obama apologists. It lets them get off the defensive — trying to defend the indefensible about his policies — and rely instead upon tried and true tactics of shooting the messenger in hopes of silencing the message.

Pity the race card is maxed out even more than the federal deficit, and those accused of it are no longer silenced out of fear. Instead, it’s become a badge of honor and running gag. I relish when I’m called a “RAAAAACIST,” because it usually means that my adversary has run out of anything else to say.

But to the main point: Jindal is right, hating Obama is foolish. He’s more to be pitied than hated.

And it’s annoying how his lickspittles are so militantly opposed to admitting that he’s a “post turtle” and vastly out of his depths, so they have to do whatever they can to silence his critics. Pity that they can’t realize how they’ve diluted their main weapon into a joke.

The rest of us talk about the actual issue of race in this country. Accusations of racism have on occasion been overstated. Against that, there’s a couple of centuries of slavery, rape, beating, castrations, false imprisonment and lynching.

Well, michael, I’d like to apologize to all the people I enslaved, raped, beat, castrated, falsely imprisoned, and lynched.

Which, I believe, doesn’t include a single ancestor of President Obama, come to think of it.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, can we discuss just how he’s utterly failing as president, including wrecking whole swaths of American industry (the Boeing/South Carolina case, the GM and Chrysler bond holders who were boned in the buyout, and let’s never forget the evil, job-killing devils behind the ATM industry), bumbling into a Constitutional crisis because he thinks that as long as he doesn’t call a war a war, it’s not a war, and running up the deficit and debt beyond the stratosphere? Or are those concerns somehow racist, too?

You got some interesting issues, michael. You tend to objectify people to what I consider their least significant aspect, and fetishize the hell out of it. You can’t stand Sarah Palin, so you sexualize her at every opportunity. You can’t stand seeing people criticize Obama, so you see him as The Black Man being kept down by Whitey. You seem to think that if you can cast Obama’s critics as racism, that makes the criticism invalid and just go away.

Obama’s turning into a disaster of a president. But you don’t care, as long as you can play the hero and fight the Evil Racists. You just gotta convince the other side to play along with your little game and put on the white sheets.

Sorry, I prefer darker colors of linens. And I don’t wear them.

The saddest part is that there are genuine racists out there, really, really bad guys. And you help them stay under cover by painting a whole swath of people as “racist” when you just mean “they’re saying bad things about a black man!”

Wayne Williams is a monster, and a black man.
Ted Bundy was a monster, and a white man.
Oscar Austin was a hero, and a black man. (That’s my Navy buff showing — he has a destroyer named in his honor.)
Desmond Doss was also a hero, and a white man.

I, like a lot of people, look past “race” as best as we can. (I think it was Robert Heinlein who once said that anyone who can claim to trace their ancestry past three generations is trusting the word of people who really shouldn’t be trusted.) I try to judge people not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.

And on that test, Obama has failed miserably on too many occasions to list.

Unless you want to challenge me, of course. At that point, I will be more than glad to give you chapter and verse.

But Jindal is right — if only for purely tactical reasons. It gives race-obsessed folks like you an excuse to avoid the subject and ammunition to shoot the messengers who say what you don’t want to hear — or allow others to hear.

The only question is — are you consciously doing it, or is it purely instinctive?

What he misses, however, is that there’s very little hate for Obama himself, anymore than there was hate for Jimmy Carter.

RIght. There are four or five people in our office (and it’s not that big of an office) that hate Obama. I mean fricking hate him. His name came up at a company dinner once and one of my co-workers said “he should die!” with such venom, it really shook me up a bit.

Well, take away hatred, anger, and ignorance and you just have a big empty space where the far right used to be. It’s like oxygen to them.

As much as I hate to side with anjin, I am just old enough to remember the Carter era — and there was quite a bit of hate for that guy, too.

Nowhere near as much hate as there was for George W. Bush, but it was there. Hell, even I, who was 11 when he left office, was fed up with him at the end.

Hating presidents is a time-honored American tradition. We hated them enough to kill four of them, wound two more, and there have been assassination attempts on nearly every president since FDR, excepting Eisenhower and LBJ (which astonishes me). There were two attempts against Clinton, and three or four against George W. Bush.

Sadly, for conservatives anyway, it seems like every time they try to get traction in an argument against the president using the factors Jay mentioned, we have incidents like the comedian at the Republican Conference or various Republicans talking about the president’s attributes that supposedly make him the other (Kenyan worldview, etc.)…perhaps if people like Jay would like the racial aspects to be severed from the discussion, they would do well to talk to their fellow travelers about not bringing those racial aspects up in the first place…

Interested, the point I was trying to make was that while the “melanin content” has changed, the hatred has not. Which would be a datum indicating that race is NOT an important factor.

I believe that, in most cases, the “racial” aspect of Obama hatred is not a root factor, but an identifying factor. It’s a symptom, not a disease. And treating symptoms while ignoring the disease is, in nearly all cases, bad medicine.

Interested, would that be the comedian that the Republicans literally yanked off the stage? Or did I miss something?

Alec Baldwin wanted to literally lynch Congressman Henry Hyde and his family, and he’s actually being talked about as running for elected office.

I lost count of how many prominent liberals cheered every health crisis Dick Cheney had — it got so bad, the Puffington Host had to shut down comments on every article they posted about those incidents.

Who was it who wanted Clarence Thomas’ wife to keep feeding him unhealthy foods so he’d have a heart attack? Who was it who wanted Jesse Helms’ grandchildren to get AIDS?

I repeat: when the party and the race of the president change, and the hatred remains the same, that’s a pretty potent argument that race is not a motivating factor, but an expression of a deeper cause.

Kudos to Bobby Jindal. I’m not much of a fan of his, but I admire him in this case. He took a risk for what is right.

As for comparing Obama or Clinton Derangement Syndrome to Bush D.S., I think that’s absurd. I despise Bush, and I still do, for things he actually did. Took us into a war on premises he either knew were false or should have known were false. Used 9/11 as an opportunity to divide rather than unite the country. And perhaps worst of all, turned the US, for the first time in its history, into a torturing nation.

People hate Obama and hated Clinton for crazy stuff that’s not even real, delusional stuff they make up and rant about to each other.

Interested, the point I was trying to make was that while the “melanin content” has changed, the hatred has not.

Except some of the hatred seems to be based on the melanin content…to argue that race is not an important factor shows that you really do exhibit the tone-deafness that Steven Taylor referenced on another thread…

Interested, would that be the comedian that the Republicans literally yanked off the stage? Or did I miss something?

Indeed, after he started trashing Republicans…

When the criticisms of the president rest on his actions, and not on where his father was from, or what his name sounds like, or where he was raised, then you will get a lot further arguing that race is not an important factor in the hatred exhibited against the president…

Interested, that’s because you’re taking it at face value. Angry people don’t always “reveal inner truths” when they lash out; sometimes they express themselves in ways that they think will cause the most pain.

What he misses, however, is that there’s very little hate for Obama himself

Really? I think this type of position is akin to after seeing a bunch of JR High bullies pushing around smaller, nerdier kids saying “Oh they’re just playing….”

A lot of hate is directed at every president, but after looking at the venom that has come out of moments like the Birthers and the sharing of clearly racially motivated “jokes” (see the various “watermelons at the whitehouse” pieces circulated) there is an increased level of hate directed at Obama.

In part it’s also because of the stressful times we’re living in. And also the feeling (most likely true) that the US is fundamentally changing and will never be the same.

The “racism/hate” charge is an easy one for the Obama apologists. It lets them get off the defensive — trying to defend the indefensible about his policies — and rely instead upon tried and true tactics of shooting the messenger in hopes of silencing the message.

One thing to note on this — the mistake that you are making is treating all of the criticism of Obama as equal. If someone critiques his policy in Libya or argue about the stimulus, etc and does it on the basis of facts — there is nothing remotely racist about this.

If someone critiques it by saying that Obama wants to destroy the US, or as with the Birther’s and Transcripters — essentially keeps saying he doesn’t deserve the position, he was handed everything in his life (i.e. – Affirmative Action), or that he isn’t American or wasn’t born here, some people who, during the 2008 election, called him a terrorist, the stressing of “Hussain” in his middle name, or Eric Bolling of Fox New’s recent discussions of his ‘drinkin’ 40’s’ and hosting ‘thugz’ at the White House — all of that is so marked as racist that it’s scary.

And yes, that might be an expression of frustration and hate that the other guy is in the White House — but the level of vitriol is so much more apparent. As I said, go back and look at the attacks on Carter (he was a well meaning Buffon) and Clinton (he was a calculating crook, but he was also an EXCELLENT crook). Every attack on Obama the man (versus his policies) is based on the fact that he doesn’t deserve the position, he’s not smart enough to do it, and he isn’t American.

The people making these arguments (the attacks based on person not policy) — be they implicit or explicit — clearly think that not only what they are saying is acceptable speech. More problematically, the subtext of these attacks points to the fact that the people who are making them do think there is something “less” about being a minority — that being Black in the age of affirmative action means that you cannot deserve your position or be a real American, and that more likely than not, you’re a thug in waiting.

Hating the President is fine by me. But hate him based on what he’s actually done, not some nightmare conjured from your subconcious (or, more likely, from an email forward). Hate him for Lybia (or continuing Afghanistan long past the point of absurdity): fine. Hate him for the healthcare law (what’s actually in it, mind you), fine.

Every attack on Obama the man (versus his policies) is based on the fact that he doesn’t deserve the position, he’s not smart enough to do it, and he isn’t American.

One could argue that the first two critiques were thrown at GWB the man. Two thoughts on this:

Such attacks were largely classist.

Meaning that they were based on seeing GWB as the product of “American Royalty.” This also tied into his being a legacy student at Yale and the fact that his father was at one point head of the CIA, VP and President. And at the time that Bush took office, his family was the most prominent political dynasty on the Republican side. Bush v. Gore only feuled these fortunate son claims.

As far as being dumb — that was largely drawn from the folksy affect that he assumed.

With Obama, despite all that he accomplished, and coming from nothing, the meme is that he still deserved none of this. And if the key reason for this is Afirmative Action, then the argument can be made that you are really ignoring the hard work of the individual and the honors that he had bestowed on him prior to entering office and instead focusing solely on “where his skin color got him.” I’m not sure how that gets separated from racism.

Oh, and btw, the general feeling with Clinton was a begrudging respect — no one doubted that he worked to become president. It was that he was seen as having no moral center. Obama — even more so than GWB — is seen as having been given the presidency. The irony here is that Obama handily won the position, where as GWB was “given” the position to the degree that ceasing to count ballots settled the issue.

Not going to bother reading the comment thread, but similar to hate the sin not the sinner, one can hate Obama’s policies without hating Obama. It is a path I try to take as I have counseled others not to make it personal. Obama seems like a nice enough guy, it’s just the loony, misgiuded assumptions he has about human nature and economics that result in spectacularly bad public policy decisions I don’t care for. When my neighbor espouses similar sentiments I can just shrug my shoulders and agree to disagree. When someone who can take everything I have from me legally by force, inflate away my life savings, etc., says the same things, well, I should be able to disagree rather vehemently without personal animus towards him (primarily because I do not believe he is motivated by personal animus towards me) nor with implications of personal animus levelled against me, e.g., charges of racism.

When someone who can take everything I have from me legally by force, inflate away my life savings, etc., says the same things, well, I should be able to disagree rather vehemently without personal animus towards him (primarily because I do not believe he is motivated by personal animus towards me) nor with implications of personal animus levelled against me, e.g., charges of racism.

Wow it’s like you just discovered how the United states government has worked for the last +230 years..

“Like I said, we think the radical right is badly misinformed, they think we are evil.”

— Nah, not buying it. I see exactly that sentiment all the time on right-leaning sites, but in reverse. It seems just as obvious to them that leftists think the radical right is evil, while the right simply thinks the leftists are badly misinformed. The truth is, there are always going to be people who over-personalize a policy dispute.

I don’t think much of the president as a man. I don’t trust his word. I deplore his policies. Hate him? I don’t think so. More of a dull contempt coupled with a determination to do what I can to get him out of office.

Birtherism is growing. Obama’s policies have been so bad that now 32% of voters believe he was born in the US. Kenyan voters, that is.

Now that the opening joke is out of the way, Jindal is quite correct. I neither love nor hate President Obama, nor can I. I’ve never met him, probably never will, so I don’t know the man. I do, however, strongly disagree with his policies and intentions for the nation.

what gets missed here is that the public understands the intelectual debate quite well, and many from a first hand perspective. Unemployment, and soaring prices tends to focus the mind rather effectively. Such focus, however tends to be very personal. So who can blame if the attacker against a certain political philosophy tends to focus on the largest target that is of that philosophy? IN this case, liberalism and yes, socialism, and Obama?

So, hate? Not really. But I’ll reconsider my thought on the matter when I see you come back and say the left’s hate against Bush or anything for that matter to the right of Castro, is unjustified.

RE: Ben Wolf
“Like I said, we think the radical right is badly misinformed, they think we are evil.”

I am not a radically right person but I think maybe they don’t think you are so much evil as naive. Afterall, didn’t the radical left get rid of BushHitler to put in Obama, the warmonger? Maybe they aren’t as uneducated as you like to pretend.